So this whole ‘plagiarizing’ Bleach situation got me thinking about the whole Super Junior jacking Lyle’s choreographies. In essence the situations are very similar.

If you’re wondering what I’m talking about and you haven’t heard, Nick Simmons, son of Gene Simmons is under scrutiny by the manga fans as well as his own publishers.

Nick set out to release his new “manga” called Incarnate.

It was brought to Kubo Tite’s attention yesterday when he received message overload on his twitter stating that someone in the U.S. is copying his work of Bleach.

I’m not going to go into the whole debate about it. You can read and a very well written article about it by Deb Aoki.

For full comparison’s between the two you can see it at Bleachness@LJ.

Now for my comparison to the SuJu situation before. Honestly, I’m only writing about it because the two situations are very very similar.

If I was mangaka and people were making fan-art of my work, that’s a huge compliment. It means that my story, my art work is liked/loved by many people. Enough so, that people want to re-produce it in their own eyes. But, if someone blantly took my work, like straight copied it, got it produced in mass production and sold as ‘original’ I’d be mad.

Realize Japan is on a whole different level when it comes what is entertainment and what sells/works. What works in that country won’t work here. It’s been tried and failed.

This is like the Super Junior ‘copying’ 2 of Lyle Beniga’s choreographies. After reading about this situation, one can actually say they plagiarized his work.

How? The difference of people learning a choreography and posting it on YouTube and having an actual Idol group perform it on national television (and in a dance battle that they ended up winning) is pretty big. There is no fine line in that sense.

The situations are very similar in this case. Fan-art is copied but at the same time has the artists’ own style (or flare) to it. They aren’t getting paid huge amounts of money. Yes they are attempting to sell it, but like most of what twitterverse has been saying, they don’t make that much money and sometimes end up in the red.

What Nick did was not only copy the original work, but claimed it as his own. He is a ‘celebrity’ and is/was going to make profit. It’s the same thing with SuJu. While they didn’t say it was their original choreography, they didn’t give proper credit to it’s original creator.

Both situations have a celebrities who ‘traced’/’copied’ another’s work. It wasn’t just the story line, it was character design and drawing style as well. Both situations included people who in their own genre’s are famous, but not as famous or paid as ‘well known’ as the celebrities. (Although Nick is living off his dad’s name.)

There’s a fine line between fan-art and plagiarizing.

What do you all think?

There’s also a facebook group that has a list of other manga’s Nick is accused of plagiarizing.

At the MAMA event that happened a couple of days ago, YG artists took the stage and blew everyone away. More specifically G-Dragon that is. During a performance he had a wardrobe malfunction, while in the middle of his “Heartbreaker” set his pants ripped in a happy region.

Speaking of wardrobe, what is up with the white furry jacket? I know he’s a pretty boy, but really, do they really need to dress him in such things? He isn’t a girl, did they forget that? Although I am digging the hair a bit, long hair, shaved sides, reminds me of my old haircut. What I do like are his earrings. They’re pretty nice, looks like it’s to be about 0G. Now if he can only gain maybe like 5-10 pounds and not look like he’s anorexic, he’d be a lot hotter.

While I’m prone to say this is “omg ahaha”, what really got my attention in his performance was the camera work. That has got to be one of the worst cameraman workmanship I have seen. Not only did the camera man focus on G-Dragon’s misfortune, but you can’t even see the entire performance. What about the people in the control room? That couldn’t have been the only camera on set, as the stage is placed between two sets of audiences.

I don’t know about you, but I think that cameraman’s lack of ‘camera work’ is a lot more faulty than the wardrobe malfunction. It was more of a fancam than anything else.

I’ll be the first to say and admit, I was never a 2PM fan. I will say this though, I am really disappointed and upset at the online community, whether it be fans and anti’s alike. With good reason too.

Look at what the fandom and online communities have done. They took one thing and has forced Jaebeom to resign, thinking it was probably in the best interest of the group and the company. Although part of me does think it is a ploy set by the management to gain sympathy and Jaebeom will be back soon. The fact that he took it upon himself to leave, you know as well as I do that 99.9% of the blame lies within the netizens.

Koki Tanaka does, so to speak. So I came upon an entry that made me laugh to myself as I was reading it. Then the picture came and I laughed even more, because really, who does that?

Koki is known to be the clubber, the bad boy of KAT-TUN, but really he’s just a wanna-be. If you’re gonna be all that, don’t be in an idol group. No, really, don’t, you end up ruining the image other youngin’s have of being an idol. That or it gives them something to look forward to.

“I saw Koki’s tattoos for the first time in June,” A-san said. She explains she met him one night when she went to a club in Roppongi with some friends and she also spoke of an encounter with him in Shibuya. “Everyone knows he likes to go clubbing. The event in Roppongi but was packed with groupies so he said, ‘Let’s go someplace else,’ so we went to his house.”

A-san described Koki’s clothes as b-boy style complete with sideways cap and a pair of Tanaka Koki original sneakers.

The group went to Koki’s apartment, which has a view of Tokyo Tower. A-san claims his place is pretty fly but then tells us he has leopard print carpet, thus rendering her statement invalid.

With all his sneakers, his wall looked like a shoe store display. He also had some gold sparkly dragon artwork or something and CDs on display. On his table, which also had a picture of dragon, he put beer, tequila, and gin.

Everyone’s drinking and having a good time and that’s when the tattoo show starts. When asked if he had any new ones he started showing them off. “He has a musical note on his wrist (a clef). I’d heard about it but was really surprised to see it. Koki said Japanese people mustn’t forget the Japanese spirit (大和魂 – yamato damashii) so he has a one that says ‘yamato.'”
This is on the inside of his lip, by the way.

When asked if it was okay him to have tattoos even though he’s an idol he said, “It does look bad, but there’s more to life than work. My private life is important to me, too. I’m only one man.”

Well at least we know there are people out in Japan who are willing to share this info and JE can’t do a damn thing about it.